Review: 'Captain Phillips' extraordinary

By Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Updated 9:32 am, Thursday, October 10, 2013

Photo: Jasin Boland / Sony - Columbia Pictures

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Tom Hanks (second from right) plays the title role in “Captain Phillips,” the true story of a seemingly ordinary man who responds to the most tense of situations — his ship being taken over by Somali pirates — with shrewd bravery. less

Tom Hanks (second from right) plays the title role in “Captain Phillips,” the true story of a seemingly ordinary man who responds to the most tense of situations — his ship being taken over by Somali ... more

Photo: Jasin Boland / Sony - Columbia Pictures

Review: 'Captain Phillips' extraordinary

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Another highlight in Tom Hanks' Americana gallery, “Captain Phillips” is the story of a seemingly regular guy who turns out to be something more than a regular guy, thus giving hope to regular guys everywhere.

Specifically, this is the true story of Richard Phillips, an American merchant seaman who spent several of the most tense days imaginable locked in a struggle with Somali pirates in 2009.

If you remember the news accounts, you remember the outcome (you won't hear about it here). Yet there's a big difference between knowing about something and experiencing it. In “Captain Phillips” director Paul Greengrass gets viewers to a place where they feel it — enough that they appreciate what Phillips went through and yet only so much that they can stand it. This is an intense and complicated story, and the film doesn't rush it. It lets it unfold and build methodically.

In the process, the audience learns things about commercial shipping, something most of us have never thought of. For example, there are no weapons on those boats — at least there were none on the Maersk Alabama, which Phillips piloted — no torpedo, no machine gun, nothing. And so, when Phillips (Hanks) looks and sees two tiny motorboats pop up on the radar, going fast and heading in his direction, he is more than concerned but doesn't panic.

“Captain Phillips” was guaranteed to be a gripping chronicle because what happened was so remarkable. But beyond the bare events, there's also Phillips himself, who found himself in a predicament demanding that he be smart, shrewd and beyond-belief brave, moment by moment, for days, in the face of imminent mortal danger.

When another person might have been scared out of his wits, Phillips had to be brilliant. He had to look the pirates straight in the face and lie to them — and get them to believe him when they expected lies.

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So Phillips is not just somebody who had something extraordinary happen to him. He's an extraordinary person in his own right. That, as much as anything else, makes “Captain Phillips” more than an adept thriller, but rather a tale of character under pressure, the portrait of someone who gradually inspires awe.

Four Somali pirates board the ship, and the one in charge announces, “No al-Qaida here, just business.” When the pirates discover that they've taken an American ship, they break into smiles. It's one of the unexpected undercurrents of “Captain Phillips,” the weird affection the pirates seem to have for the United States, which to them is synonymous with glamour, wealth and good times — all the things they're after.

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Captain Phillips

Quick take: Tom Hanks amazes as a regular-guy hero in this gripping drama.

And so it begins: Phillips must deal with four men carrying machine guns, whose culture he doesn't understand, and who are all chewing khat, a plant that creates a sense of aggression and euphoria. Only one of the men speaks enough English that a conversation is possible, and that man, as played by Barkhad Abdi, is ruthless and alert to any hint of dissembling. Good acting doesn't happen in a vacuum. Abdi's fierceness and odd sensitivity helps bring out of Hanks a signature performance.

True, Hanks' New England accent sounds like he's just talking funny, and, going in, Hanks has an innate advantage — the movie star's magic gift for inciting empathy just by standing there. But Hanks' transparency is something brilliant. His face is so easy to read that we not only get his emotions but the complexity of his thinking.

At one point, for example, he knows these pirates are finished, that they're either going to be dead or imprisoned, that there is absolutely no way out for them. And he just sits in dread of their realizing it. Likewise, his depiction of a man in a state of traumatic shock must go down as one of his best moments on screen.

Greengrass likes the hand-held camera and likes to move it around, but he's an artist, not merely jittery. The cutting, the camera work and the pace all support the mood he's building, one of gradual and increasing tension, to the point that it becomes almost unbearable — and then a little beyond.